National sports awards should simply honour the best

BY ENOCK MUCHINJO

HARARE – The Annual National Sports Awards (ANSA) is supposed to be the biggest celebration of Zimbabwe’s finest sports stars of the year, an occasion where excellence is feted and honoured.

This momentous awards ceremony, which dates back decades ago, has in the past carried enormous prestige as it recognised and rewarded only the best that the country offered across the different sporting disciplines.

It has however long lost its lustre, one of the chief reasons being glaring oversight by the selectors, who have tended to omit outstanding sports stars who may have gone on to land the biggest prize had they been nominated.

The 2025 awards, scheduled to be held sometime this year, is yet another occasion that this ceremony has fallen short in terms of selection.

For how do you explain that in a year in which the Zimbabwe rugby national team qualified for its first World Cup in 34 years, their most influential player, the guy who orchestrated the team’s moves and was duly named Player of The Tournament in the tough qualification competition, the most fiercely contested qualifiers ever in Africa, isn’t even among the nominees for any of the ANSA awards?

Talismanic Sables flyhalf Ian Prior was simply sensational at the qualifiers in Uganda last year, directing the team’s attack with the poise and composure of a true professional and real warrior.

He was also prolific with the kicking tee, too, thrusting Zimbabwe in winning positions in all three qualifiers in Kampala.

In difficult and wet conditions in the quarter-final against Morocco, Prior’s 23 points contributed more that half of Zimbabwe’s final score in the 43-8 win over the North Africans.

Prior was also sure-footed in the semi-final against Kenya, as a workman-like performance by the Sables saw them grind out a 29-23 win to send them into the final for their date with destiny.

And then in biggest game of all those gallant Sables’ lives, in the final against old rivals Namibia – the ever-present nemesis of the Zimbabweans – Prior kicked 15 points in the narrow 30-28 victory that secured a place in history and a return to one of world sport’s grandest stages.

Two of the most prestigious categories at the ANSA event are the Sportsman of The Year and the overall Sportsperson of The Year awards.

Given these individual statistics – the impact and significance of the Sables number 10’s performances in those very important three Tests, the most important matches in Zimbabwean rugby in over three decades, the most important three games in Zimbabwean sport in 2025 – Prior would easily take one or both of these awards.

But he won’t, because, incredibly, he has not been nominated for neither one of them.

Zimbabwean rugby has made it for three categories, which is some kind of a consolation perhaps.

The Sables are deservedly nominated for the Team of The Year award. They should win it for qualifying for this historic World Cup.

Sables head coach Piet Benade is deservedly among the Coach of the Year nominees. He should win it for guiding the team to the World Cup in Australia next year.

Referee Precious Pazani is deservedly nominated for the Technical Sports Official of the Year award. She should win it for making history by being selected to officiate at the Women’s Six Nations and the Women’s Rugby World Cup last year.

But, surely, while rugby is of course a team sport, such mammoth success by the Sables as in 2025 cannot fail to produce an individual or two worthy of being honoured as such a national awards ceremony.

If not Ian Prior, what about the captain Hilton Mudariki for his inspiration leadership from the outset as Zimbabwe set out on their ambitious journey to join the world’s elite again?

What about nominations at least for guys like Hilton’s two deputies, Kudzi Mashawi and Aiden Burnett, tenacious fighters who have been there since day one when the dream was conceived and were there right until it’s fruition in Kampala last July?

The nominees for the Sportsman of the Year award are sprinter Tapiwanashe Makarawu, Zimbabwe T20 cricket captain Sikandar Raza and karateka Wilfred Mashaya. The overall Sportsperson of the Year award list has Makarawu, Raza and female tennis player Sasha Chimedza.

Raza is brilliant cricketer, top-notch leader and motivator, and an even better man.

In 2025, Raza played four less Tests than Zimbabwe’s young batting sensation, Brian Bennett, so let’s put that aside at take a glimpse at their white-ball statistics in the year under review.

They both played five ODIs and four innings, Bennett amassing 268 runs at an average of 53.60, and scoring one century. Raza notched up 217 runs at an average of 72.33.

In T20s they also had the same number of matches and innings, 25. Bennett with 936 runs at 37.44 and a highest score of 111. Raza with 536 runs at 24.36 and two half-centuries.

And then add in there, for Bennett, a Test century at Trent Bridge on Zimbabwe’s first tour of England in 22 years, and a world record of becoming the youngest player to score a century in all three formats of the game. Not worthy of recognition?

The argument is the same for Zimbabwe fast bowling ace Blessing Muzarabani.

It is a fair assessment that it was Muzarabani’s magnificent form at the T20 World Cup earlier this year that catapulted him to the IPL deal with Kolkata Knight Riders for the 2026 season.

But just take a look at his numbers for Zimbabwe in 2025.

10 Tests, 299.4 overs, 42 wickets, average of 26.80.

Five ODIs, 47.3 overs, seven wickets, average of 38.28.

16 T20s, 51.1 overs, 16 wickets, average of 24.93.

Now, that takes a lot of convincing for anyone to agree that any of those athletes on the main ANSA awards for 2025 outperformed Muzarabani.

It is astonishing, absolutely unbelievable, that one of just a few of your truly top-class cricketers, admired across the cricketing world, gets ignored by his own country's national awards.